A bird's-eye view of sport, translated by two humans. With added waffling.

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Melky Cabrera tests positive for stupidity

One of the dilemmas facing any serious professional athlete is "how should I respond when I inevitably test positive for performance-enhancing drugs?" Several tried and tested approaches are available to today's discerning cheats. We like to imagine them perusing a menu along the lines of Pulp Fiction's 50s diner.

First on the list is the depressingly unpopular 'David Millar': admit the offence straight away, accept the sanctions and become an unsanctimonious advocate for clean sport. Picture them rolling their eyes at his naïvety as they skip straight to the 'Carl Lewis': convince your country's feckless governing body that your three positive tests and those of your training partners should be ignored because they were all caused by over-the-counter cold medication, then profit from other cheats being properly punished (though this might be a little outdated now, as it famously didn't work for Alain Baxter in 2002). Those seeking a contemporary twist might therefore be tempted by the 'Alberto Contador' (or simply 'lo de siempre', as it's known among Spanish cyclists): blame contaminated meat and maintain your innocence while persuading your country's governing body to backdate the required ban to allow a quicker return to competition. Mature rich athletes seem to favour the quick and painless 'Manny Ramirez': simply run away (without paying) and retire to avoid any further sanctions. Recreational users, on the other hand, are rather partial to the flamboyant and fruitful 'Richard Gasquet': claim that you only ingested the drug by kissing someone at a party and get off scot free. Finally, there's always the 'Lance Armstrong' twelve-course bullshit banquet: allegedly manufacture a retrospective therapeutic use exemption after a first positive test, allegedly pay your sport's governing body to cover up a second positive test, slag off French cycling to discredit further positive tests from frozen samples, retire twice and switch sports, claim the anti-doping authorities are biased when most of your former teammates, coaches and doctors agree to testify against you, refuse to offer any defence in an 'unfair' forum and flounce off into the Texan sunset relying on credulous wristband cult acolytes to preserve a reputation built on lies while you try to pursue your laughable political ambitions. We imagine most self-respecting athletes would be put off by the health warning attached to that last option: it may prove difficult to swallow, and could take up to 13 years to fully digest.

Needless to say we thought we'd seen it all, but one cheat wasn't happy to follow the well-trodden path of his unscrupulous predecessors: he decided to order 'off menu', as it were. Step forward San Francisco Giants outfielder and forward-thinking doping pioneer Melky Cabrera. 

"Kids: drink milk, take drugs"

Cabrera was traded from the Kansas City Royals to the Giants over the winter. He'd played poorly for the Royals, but 'the Melkman' started to deliver with his new team and quickly established his position as the cream of their line-up. The improvement in his production was stunning - he compiled a ridiculous 51 hits in May alone, breaking Willie Mays' Giants record for that month which had stood for 54 years. Cabrera's batting average of .346 for the season still leads the Major Leagues today. This form saw him picked for the National League All-Star team in July and he won the All-Star Game MVP award by hitting the only home run that night.

On 15 August, to the surprise of absolutely no-one, Cabrera tested positive for an elevated level of testosterone. We're pretty devastated that creatine wasn't his drug of choice, as we'd love to have called him a creative creatine cretin. Even more incidentally, it's worth noting that he was only suspended for 50 games (or roughly two months of regular season baseball) by Major League Baseball under its ludicrously lenient rules, whereas the World Anti-Doping Agency best practice model recommends at least a two-year ban.

So what was Cabrera's response (via his agents) to his positive test? Did they confess his sins and meekly accept the proposed sanction?

No. They bought a website for $10,000 and redesigned it to look like it belonged to a fictitious supplier from whom Cabrera could claim to have bought a made-up supplement spiked with testosterone, so they could appeal his ban on the grounds that he had ingested the substance inadvertently.

While this might seem so stupid as to be a subconscious plea for more severe punishment, we can't help but applaud Team Cabrera's willingness to go the extra mile. Unfortunately, the entire ruse was scuppered within hours when MLB's investigators found that the site's hosting linked straight back to an employee of Cabrera's agents. That employee has since been banned by MLB, but no further sanctions have been levied against either Cabrera or his agents. It's almost as if the administrators were impressed by the scale of the scheme; as if they were handing out style points for artistic impression.

When it comes dodging a drugs ban and keeping yourself in the batter's box, it seems you might as well think outside the box. If nothing else, we salute Melky Cabrera for his ham-fisted accomplishments in light entertainment. A career in vaudeville awaits when his contract expires in November.


Wednesday 5 September 2012

Paralympic heroes #5 and #6: Iliesa Delana and Łukasz Mamczarz

In Monday's F42 high jump final, Iliesa Delana and Łukasz Mamczarz cleared 1.74m to earn gold and bronze medals for Fiji and Poland. They each have one leg, and they each cleared the bar by hopping up and somersaulting over it. They won their medals competing against two-legged athletes with equivalent disabilities.

No textbook technique; no bouncy prosthetics. Fuck you Dick Fosbury, and the flop you flopped in on.

F42 is the most severe class of non-visual disability where the high jump is contested. The staggering world record of 1.96m belongs to Canadian legend Arnold Boldt, who also only has one leg and won high jump golds at five consecutive Paralympics (not to mention two more golds and a silver in the long jump). Click here to see Arnie somersault over 1.85m - all the more impressive because he managed to keep his glasses on!

The F42 high jump is absolutely captivating and puts its able-bodied equivalent in the shade - if you missed it, Channel 4's highlights are available here, and we've included some wobbly footage of Delana's winning jump at the bottom of this post. It's completely redefined our frame of reference to the point where we couldn't care less how high able-bodied athletes can jump any more: one-legged somersaulting is where it's at. So change the Olympic programme! Reset the records! Burn effigies of Javier Sotomayor's tibias! Perhaps that's going a touch far, but let's at least give these guys the acclaim and attention they so richly deserve.




Paralympic hero #4: David Wetherill

A British Class 6 table tennis player ranked fifth in the world underperformed and was knocked out in the second round at the Paralympics.

Nothing much to shout about there, you might think. So far, so British. And you'd be right, if David Wetherill hadn't managed to produce THE BEST SHOT EVER IN ANY RACQUET SPORT in the process of losing the decisive fourth game. If you think we're exaggerating, consider this: when was the last time you saw officials and opposing coaches applauding a player during a match? As one-hit wonders go, he's the Joe Dolce of ping pong; the Norman Greenbaum of wiff waff.

Much as we'd love to eulogise, we won't spoil the shot for you just in case you haven't already seen it. Once you've taken a moment to prepare your mind for a good old-fashioned boggling, click play below and get ready to catch your jaw when it drops.




Tuesday 4 September 2012

Paralympic hero #3: Matt Stutzman

On paper, Matt Stutzman comes across as a dyed-in-the-flannel redneck. The official London 2012 website lists his hobbies as "cars", and by all accounts he loves nothing (or perhaps more accurately nothin') more than huntin', shootin' and fishin'. His personal website looks like a cry for help from a kidnapped designer circa 1999. He's from Iowa, for crying (cryin') out loud. It's fair to say we weren't expecting - or even expectin' - to be friends.

Then we saw him win a silver medal in compound archery by gripping a bow between his prehensile toes and aiming arrows with his mouth. You see, Matt Stutzman is a double arm amputee. And just like the swimmers we mentioned in our last post, he's competing against and beating rivals with arms, despite only having picked up a bow for the first time two years ago. So while he might be mostly armless, he's positively lethal to bullseyes and bunny rabbits. We just hope he isn't familiar with the plot of the Jonathan Creek pilot

Sadly we couldn't find any footage of him in action at the Paralympics, but we do rather like the below interview conducted as part of Team USA's preparations for the Games. It starts a little slowly, but don't be deterred by his riveting tales of hole-punch debris and doorknobs - the slow-motion shots capturing his technique are spectacular. By the time he delivers his inspirational closing message, we're sure you'll want to join us in cheering him all the way to gold in Rio.





Paralympic heroes #1 and #2: Zheng Tao and Iaroslav Semenenko

We hate swimming backstroke. It seems unnecessarily awkward and splashy, you can't see where you're going and the timing is tricky.

We have four limbs. With apologies to ZZ Top, we just don't know how to use them.

Double arm amputees Zheng Tao and Iaroslav Semenenko finished first and fourth in the men's S6 100m backstroke final on Thursday evening, competing against swimmers with more limbs whose equivalent disabilities still allowed them to use a much more recognisable backstroke technique. Zheng also broke the world record.

It's well worth checking out the whole race below, despite Barcelona breaststroke bronze medallist Nick Gillingham's discordantly soporific commentary. Zheng is in lane 5, Semenenko in lane 3. Do keep a sympathetic eye on Semenenko as he battles bravely for bronze against a German swimmer whose arms give him a clear advantage at the finish line.

Just thinking about the incredible core strength and balance required to overcome their handicap in this event, not to mention the dedication and tenacity that brought them here, is pretty overwhelming. Zheng and Semenenko's achievements will stick with us as one of the enduring images of London 2012.